While five months of hard work may have flown by for West Kelowna’s Hockeyville volunteers, the competition’s final week seems like it will never end, according to campaign organizers.

“I finished a meeting early Tuesday afternoon and thought ‘great, that’s another day behind me’, then I realized it was only 2pm and I still had a full afternoon of work ahead of me. The waituntil Saturday is almost unbearable. The hands on the clock won’t move fast enough” Says local Hockeyville Co-Chair, Andrew Deans.

“This may be the longest week of our lives. At least we have no shortage of things to do. With Saturday’s event coming up, we literally only started preparing for it last Friday. Accomplishing a month’s worth of work in one week, has been a real challenge.”

Organizers will be busy working with Kraft Hockeyville representatives transforming Royal LePage Place with Kraft Hockeyville banners, rink boards and decorations on Friday. Then on Saturday, the team has a full slate of events and activities planned, both on ice, and outside thearena.

“With CBC coming to town to broadcast live throughout the day, and videotape the day’s events, we want to create as much of a festival environment as we can and showcase minor hockey too. It’s a lot of work, but our team is amazing and everyone has rolled up their sleeves and committed themselves to the job at hand.” Says Deans.

Finding the energy to prepare for the weekend has been no easy task either, considering the Hockeyville team is fresh off two exhaustive rounds of voting.

“When we wrapped up and tore everything down last Wednesday at our voting centre, we were pretty tired. But there’s been no time to rest.”

Deans and the local Kraft Hockeyville group hope to pack the house Saturday when the winner is announced, but Deans isn’t making any predictions.

“We just don’t want to speculate. All that’s important to us is that we know we did the best job we could. And if we lose, we want to at least have the place packed and show all of Canada that nobody can deny this community has spirit. And if we win, then we want a big crowd so we can celebrate with a few thousand of our closest friends!”

For full details on Saturday’s events, including the live free live Canucks telecast and winner’s announcement, visit the West Kelowna Kraft Hockeyville website at www.westkelownahockeyville.com.